Better U Week 3 Down

Another green smoothie that isn't really green. Ran out of greens again so this has more strawberries than spinach. My planning is way off because all of a sudden my family is into lots and lots of deep leafy greens! It is that salad time of year I guess.

Whoops, another missed Monday for posting, well at least it is only Tuesday. I'm down two more pounds. So that is five all together. Not up, which is amazing and great because I had a birthday party and family party kind of weekend with lots of tempting food which I will be honest, I totally succumbed to. So that is proving to me that all this extra physical activity is
A) Worth the extra pain and fatigue

B) Actually working to help me lose weight

C) Needs to continue unless I make major major changes in how much I eat.

As far as goals go for last week, how did I do?

I did not find my pedometer, so I did not track my steps. I didn't buy one either, but I guess I will now that I've looked everywhere. I also did not start a food log, but I have started one as of rightnowtoday!

I did walk the dog some, but not everyday.
I did a lot of gardening and a huge aerobic blast of house cleaning on Saturday before my son's birthday party. I also tried my parent's WiiFit which was both intensely embarrassing (as I had to weigh-in right in front of my whole family!) and super fun. I really want to get one now.
It was scary to see how bad my balance is, and it told me I was 53. grrrrrr

I did a lot of great cooking this week, making up some new recipes, using hardly any oil to cook with, and different combos of vegies. So far so good, the family is playing along with me and have not complained. I'm lucky that they like good healthy food. I did buy lots of junk food (for the teens birthday party) and that was way too hard to have around, I just don't have the willpower. Maybe I can have them hide it from me or something. I've been letting them choose the ice cream flavor, that way it is usually not my faves and I won't want to have it as much. Pretty sneaky huh?

Goals for the week upcoming:

Buy a new pedometer and use it.

Walk the dog and garden and stretch and situps everyday. Weights at least 2 times this week.

Eat more vegies than bread.

Buy no candy.


Find someone to be on my BetterU team. Thinking who will be willing, available and helpful.....


Obstacles to overcome:

I haven't been sleeping well, it always happens around this time of year, too much staying up late since it is still light so late...Must make the attempt to go to bed at the first sign of sleepiness instead of staying up past then.

Must find the pedometer or buy a new one and actually use it.

Willpower at the store to not grab candy.

Feeling tired and hurting makes it hard to get out there and walk and garden, etc. The answer always is: Do It Anyways.

Why Do It Anyways?

The title of my blog says it all for me: "Do It Anyways".

This is my current life motto. I have to think this way because of the disease that I have which has reduced my options down to either:

1) Laying around doing nothing, eating and continually expanding

or

2) Being in motion and exercising and just plain doing stuff even though it hurts.

Because it always hurts, whether I exercise or not, so I might as well exercise if I want to keep living. Which I do. I have to remind myself of that, sometimes more often than I'd like when I'm in a big pain cycle or flare.

This thing that I have is extremely rare, incurable (at the moment), hardly studied and managed only through surgery and pain medication. The name of it is Dercum's Disease in case you happen to be interested. When I have to describe it to people I usually say that it is like fibromyalgia with bonus lumps. The lumps are lipomas and angiolipomas which are conglomerations of fat that grow all through my body (so far head,hands & feet are spared). Lipomas on their own are quite common, most people (and dogs) have them and they don't hurt and rarely need to be operated on. Mine though are very numerous, over 200 at last count, some as small as a grain of rice, other golfball sized.

I have surgery to have several at a time removed when the site specific pain gets to be too much. Thanks to a great dermatological surgeon and a great acupuncture, I've now got the surgery recovery down to a fairly easy thing. It wasn't that way at first though.

I have found that almost any significant amount of activity means that I pay for it later on, especially the next day. Sometimes I'm immobilized by weakness, pain, and lethargy for more than a day. So it is a constant struggle for me to make the choice to do stuff, to go out and use my body as everyone else can, because I know I'll pay for it the next day. But I have a family and I want to have a life where I'm involved with them, participating in their lives and activities, so I can't just skip going places all the time, that isn't going to work for me or them.

My biggest activity goal for participating in this 12 week New U program is to walk my dog, Zelda everyday. We live on a very steep street, so this isn't just an amble around the block I'm talking about. I get out of breath and sweat and everything. Sometimes I can make it on the long circuit which is about 1.5 miles (that's my "block"), sometimes only the 1/3 mile to the mailbox, sometimes just to the faux stop sign. So my main goal is to do some version of this walking the dog thing, every day. I want and need to establish this habit. Zelda needs to lose weight too, so hopefully she'll have a positive, fruitful New U experience also...